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Negro Reservations

Negro Reservations image
Parent Issue
Day
28
Month
August
Year
1874
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

The National Era, a paper which Mr. Frederick Douglass controle, gives this advice to the freedmen : " Leave those States in which you are in the minority and the subjects of prejudice and outrage, and remore to the States where you will be in the majority, and thus protect yourself against the indignitiea to which you are now exposed in many of the States." The Era goes on to recommend South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana as eligible States. There is much more in this euggestion than meets the eye. The first and last of the States named are those in which the freedmen are most in ascendency, and those two arg beyond dispute the worst-governed and worstplundered commonwealths in any civilized country. Oí course we do not blame the freedmen for this, and of course it is too late now, if anybody wished it, to retrace the steps by which these ignorant people were intrusted with a power they, and the white demagogues who have got control of them, have so shamefully abused. But if the blacks are to enter in the four States named, so as to secure a continu.nce and intensification of the present misgovernment, it is plain that the whites who inhabit them will be eager to lecve them, and that no reasonable man will put bis money into any industrial enterprise of which the returns are so uncertain as they must be in States given over to the rule of the freedmen. We own to surprise at finding so shrewd a person as Mr. Douglass giving this advice to his race. It is a confession that negroes and whites cannot get on together as equals in communities where the blacks are numerous enough to be troublesome and not numerous enough : to be predominant. It is in effect a i suggestion that they should be set ] apart from the whites as the Indians have been set apart, on the ground of . an incompatibility which forbids the ( two races to live together. But Mr. ( Douglass ought to know that the osition which virtually he makes, to set off four populous and once wealthy i States for a negro reservation, will not s be listened to by anybody for a j ment. -

Article

Subjects
Old News
Michigan Argus